Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 7, 1995 TAG: 9504070055
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Even though the girl's allegations had ruined his career as a civic leader, Heard said, it was not too late to make things right.
Turning to face the girl as she sat in the courtroom, Heard suggested that she tell the judge it had all been a mistake, that she really didn't mean all the things she had told a jury earlier, that she had been ``trapped by her own words and manipulated.''
Heard, a well-known renovator who once worked as the master builder for Explore Park in Roanoke County, told the girl, ``This is a turning point in our lives.''
But the girl, now 18, kept her head bowed and said nothing. And a few minutes later, Heard, 44, was led away by sheriff's deputies to begin serving a 10-year prison sentence for statutory rape.
Instead of winning his freedom, Heard may have sealed his fate with a prepared speech in which be blamed prosecutors, the news media and the victim for what he called ``this travesty of justice.''
When Heard finished, Judge Clifford Weckstein told him that earlier in the hearing, his lawyer had made ``all the right arguments'' in asking that the jury's sentence be suspended.
``But your statement demonstrates to me the necessity of imposing a penal commitment,'' Weckstein said.
The judge did suspend $45,000 of a $50,000 fine the jury had set, and ordered Heard to participate in counseling for sexual offenders. He also set an appeal bond for Heard.
During a two-day trial in February and Thursday's sentencing in Roanoke Circuit Court, Heard was portrayed as two different men - the successful renovator and crime-fighting civic leader described by defense attorneys, and the ``dominating'' man who prosecutors said took advantage of a young girl and made her his housekeeper and sexual partner.
``He is a very public man,'' Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Gerald Teaster said. ``But what we are here for in this trial is about what happened in private.
``While Mr. Heard may have been building up Roanoke in public, he was destroying the victim in private,'' the prosecutor said.
Earlier testimony showed that in 1991, the girl was staying at Heard's Salem Avenue home, where she cooked, cleaned and helped with his renovation business by day, and submitted to his sexual demands by night.
Heard, however, maintained that he and the girl had a loving, sexual relationship that began shortly after she turned 15. That defense put him in the awkward position of acknowledging wrongdoing, but not under the exact wording of a law that prohibits consensual sex with girls 13 or older but younger than 15.
Realizing at the time that the relationship might be frowned on - Heard recounted how he and the girl followed with interest the cases of Woody Allen and Elwood Gallimore, a Floyd County preacher who took a second, teen-age wife - he admitted to using poor judgement.
``Love made me blind to reason,'' he said.
by CNB